Review Category: Reviews

FOLK HORROR – HOURS DREADFUL AND THINGS STRANGE

There’s no doubting that folk horror is the subgenre du jour, given the current revival of public interest in the arcane and the ‘Wyrd’, psychogeography, hauntology, folklore, magic(k), carnivalia, paganism, and a general return to the pastoral. As a label, ‘folk horror’ is a catch-all for these and other nostalgia forms for the ‘people-horror’ of the 1960s/70s and its reflection of the counterculture of that era. Adam Scovell’s book provides a wonderful introduction to folk horror films, impressive in scope and comprehensive in sociocultural context.

Starting from the premise that folk horror is less a clearly definable genre than a set of cultural sensibilities, Scovell ploughs a wide furrow in terms of media coverage: ‘70s TV classics like Children of the Stones (1977) rub alongside Public Information Films of the time (such as the immortal Lonely Water [1973]); the ‘British Rurality’ of Hammer co-exists with that of David Gladwell’s BFI-produced Requiem for a Village (1975); and M.R. James crosses paths on several occasions with Nigel Kneale. Locating as his well-spring the ‘unholy trinity’ of Witchfinder General (1968), The Wicker Man (1973) and The Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971), Scovell takes us on a journey through the topography, rurality, occultism and urban ‘Wyrd’, leading us to the modern folk horror of the present day (such as can be found in the work of, among others, Ben Wheatley). The author flatly refuses to ‘beat the bounds’ of his subject – purists may object to the inclusion of films like Straw Dogs (1971) or Tarkovsky’s Andrei Rublev (1966) in a book (ostensibly) about horror cinema – but generally this broad approach works to Scovell’s advantage: it enables him to make connections between titles that might not at first strike the reader as folk horror, but which nevertheless help reveal folk horror’s deeper mechanisms.

Evocatively written and carefully researched, Folk Horror: Hours Dreadful and Things Strange is a compelling book that amply rewards reading and re-reading.

FOLK HORROR – HOURS DREADFUL AND THINGS STRANGE / AUTHOR: ADAM SCOVELL / PUBLISHER: AUTEUR / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

VOID TRIP #1

Void Trip #1 does what a first issue of any comic book miniseries should do. It offers the reader a glimpse of the personalities of the main character, their relationship dynamic, and what they are out to achieve. Over the course of the issue, we see that main characters Ava and Gabe travel around space, they really like getting high, and they often find themselves in trouble.

Since it is the first issue of a miniseries, there is a limit to how much plot Void Trip #1 can cover. Writer Ryan O’Sullivan wisely keeps the focus on Ava and Gabe’s personalities, but there are some glimpses at the plot. Unbeknownst to them, the protagonists are being pursued by an as yet unknown foe. What this person wants with them isn’t made clear. Learning the answer to this question, and just how they intend to catch his targets, provides readers with another reason to keep reading the miniseries.

The universe of Void Trip combines both the everyday and science fiction for its aesthetic. Almost all of the characters in this issue wear the sort of clothing that wouldn’t draw attention on the high street. A trucker’s ship looks very similar to a modern-day petrol truck, except that it is also clearly a spaceship. Plaid Klaus’ artwork combines these elements together so effectively that it doesn’t seem weird for a woman in a leather jacket to be holding something that could have been wielded by Duck Dodgers. This is a universe which already feels very lived in. The shinier technology is around but, much like our own world, not everything is bright and shiny. It is a relatable vision of space.

Void Trip #1 is a good start. It establishes what readers can expect from its main cast going into the miniseries. It teases future plot points with its mysterious antagonist and provides a basic understanding of how its universe works. It tells readers enough to judge whether or not to pick up the second issue but leaves enough unsaid that it feels like the miniseries could go anywhere as it progresses.

VOID TRIP #1 / WRITER: RYAN O’ SULLIVAN / ARTIST: PLAID KLAUS / LETTERER: ADITYA BIDIKAR/ PUBLISHER: IMAGE COMICS / RELEASE DATE: NOVEMBER 22ND

THE GATEHOUSE

A baffling slice of fantasy and would-be horror, The Gatehouse tells of young Eternity, a 10-year old girl living in an old gatehouse at the edge of a forest with her dad Jack. Both are still mourning the loss of Eternity’s mother and Jack, an unemployed writer, is not doing very well at being a father. Eternity likes to roam the forest digging for treasure, and one day digs up something she should have left buried. Meanwhile, Jack manages to get a gig finishing a book about the legend of some black flowers that sent the author mad and drove him to his death. Both threads link together as ghosts from the past, a god of the forest, and some mundanely evil humanity builds to its conclusion.

It’s baffling principally because it’s difficult to know who The Gatehouse is made for. The majority of the film could easily pass for a made-for-kids fantasy were it not for occasional moments of gore and swearing and as a consequence, it’s unlikely to satisfy for either youngsters or adults. Jack, as played by Simeon Willis, is an almighty knob and an irritating lead. It’s difficult to grasp though whether that’s down to Willis or because Jack is emblematic of much of the problems this film has. Jack is inconsistently written and seems like he could be in totally different films from one scene to the next. So too, with the film itself. Broad comedy mixes with attempts at scares that just don’t work together. Perhaps as a consequence, the tone and many of the performances are all over the place.

But it’s not a total loss, however. Writer Martin Gooch is also the director and here he occasionally shows more control of his material. The film was shot in beautiful countryside and Gooch doesn’t miss out on taking advantage of this. It might be made for naff all but when you point a camera at nature you don’t need money to make it look good. Scarlett Rayner, as Eternity, should be annoying as they come with screen kids but she does a nice job of not making you wish a monster would just get on with it and kill her off. That inconsistent tone and handling of the material also manages to make the last half hour or so a not-entertaining-for-the-right-reasons parade of WTF-ery that is bizarrely charming.

It’s a genuine oddity and, misdirected and stuffed full of overripe gothic fantasy cliché, is in no way good or something you need in your life. Equally though, it’s oddly naïve and sweet-natured overall and is simply difficult to dislike.

THE GATEHOUSE / CERT: TBC / DIRECTOR & SCREENPLAY: MARTIN GOOCH / STARRING: SCARLETT RAYNER, SIMEON WILLIS, LINAL HAFT / RELEASE DATE: TBC

STRANGER THINGS SEASON 2

With the first season of Stranger Things, the Duffer Brothers crafted a tale that steeped itself in ’80s culture even as it explored pleasantly (and painfully) relatable characters and concepts. Franchise staples like Steve Harrington, Nancy Wheeler, and Dustin Henderson subverted their archetypes while characters like Mike Wheeler, Eleven, and Jim Hopper embraced theirs. In its second season, Stranger Things aims for bigger action and higher stakes but often forgets to go deeper. The Duffers knew that they’d inadvertently created a blockbuster series, and it’s clear that they tried to top themselves. The result? Sometimes middling, other times fantastic, this sophomore season fights against its wiser judgments, taking risks when it never needed to and pushing Stranger Things closer to mediocrity. The first season introduced a creature that only terrified viewers because it threatened characters we’d come to love as close friends. The second season, on the other hand, seeks more through multiplication, adding more of the same monsters and sapping the series of any real surprise.

While this second season emphasizes its already present horror elements and aims to thrill in ways the first season couldn’t, it is significantly less scary, less interesting, and less exciting than its predecessor. By expanding the reach of the many-legged threat at the center of this arc, Stranger Things has sacrificed the terror of close-quartered calamity for a sporadically thrilling yet mostly trite ‘The sky is falling!’ approach that doesn’t work quite as well as the Duffers might have hoped.

Drop in quality aside, the second season adds a delightful new dynamic and shifts the focus to characters who really needed fleshing out. Will Byers functions as both hero and harbinger here, allowing for some intriguing interplay between the two juxtaposed roles. He spent the first season choking on slimy tubes in the Upside Down, so it’s only fair that he takes on a more prominent role here. The budding friendship between big-hearted, big-haired Steve Harrington and tangle-topped Dustin Henderson shines amidst a dearth of memorable interactions. That’s about all the intrigue this season holds, though. The show sends season one standouts Nancy Wheeler and Jonathan Byers off on a quest that was clearly shoehorned into an already crowded script for no reason other than to have them further explore a mutual attraction.

Stranger Things has absolutely seen better days, but what we get here never becomes bad television. It’s just ‘meh’ television, and that’s a damn shame.

DOWNRANGE

Kitamura’s follow up to The Midnight Meat Train and No-One Lives is a characteristically nihilistic piece of exploitation cinema that is sure to thrill some but may just leave a nasty taste in the mouth. The premise is a simple as the gore-drenched shoot-‘em up computer games that Kitamura seems to take inspiration from.

A car-pool of teenagers breaks down in the California desert. One by one they find themselves falling victim to a shooter who has positioned himself in a tree some distance away. With no mobile phone signal or means of summoning help, and completely trapped by the sniper, a small group of survivors desperately try to stay alive long enough for a search party to save them. But even if help does come, can it avoid the sniper’s deadly aim?

Kitamura sets up his shooting gallery with an almost bleak matter-of-factness. The teenagers are given little or no characterisation. They are merely bland targets for a sniper whose only motivation, it seems, is to notch up as many kills as possible. A long-drawn-out sequence opens the film, which sees nothing much happen except an attempt made to change a car tyre and numerous selfies taken on mobile phones; these are normal kids (as seen through the eyes of the middle-aged Kitamura), and it would seem they are in an apparently mundane situation. It’s actually a pretty effective ploy, denying any obvious suspense to the point where boredom is about to set in and the viewer almost gives up on waiting for something to happen. The idea is to make the violence, when it does come, all the more sudden and shocking because of it.

Make no mistake, Downrange is a graphic film: gratuitously so. Kitamura takes obvious delight in showing exactly what a sniper’s bullet can do to the human body. Having said that, one has grave doubts that what is intended is any kind of anti-gun message. More unsettling still is that the victims all seem to be female or ethnic minorities; with the girls and the black kid singled out for particular victimization by the shooter (and by implication the film itself). As we have said, the timing for a film such as this seems questionable.

Mid-way through, Kitamura and co-scriptwriter Joey O’Brien slow things down a bit in order to try to give the survivors some sense of empathy. However, the dialogue is such that the result is unintentionally funny, and the saccharine music score doesn’t help either. Bathos rather than pathos.

Eventually, Kitamura shows his true exploitation colours as Downrange abandons any attempts at subtlety (or intelligence) and heads towards a final battle that seems more suited to Predator than a realistic drama. By then, though, every new on-screen atrocity is more likely to be met with hoots of laughter than any feeling of genuine horror, as indeed was the case in the Celluloid Screams screening that this reviewer attended.

We could write off Downrange as just another survivalist horror, but conscience tells us that the subject matter warrants more serious treatment than Kitamura affords it here.

DOWNRANGE (CELLULOID SCREAMS FILM FESTIVAL)/ CERT: TBC / DIRECTOR: RYÛHEI KITAMURA / STARRING: KELLY CONNAIRE, STEPHANIE PEARSON, ROD HERNANDEZ/ RELEASE DATE: TBC

SPIDER-MAN: HOMECOMING

Michael Giacchino has fast become the go-to guy for Disney and Marvel. His score for Pixar’s Coco is imminent, and fans are already salivating over next years Incredibles 2 soundtrack. His work on Spider-Man came quickly on the heels of both his debut Marvel score for Doctor Strange and his ridiculously swift 4-week turnaround for Lucasfilm’s Rogue One. In short, as Octobers 50th anniversary concert at the Royal Albert Hall clearly displayed, Giacchino is a much-loved, highly respected, Oscar-winning workhorse.

All true, but does that come together to deliver the rip-roaring Spider-Man Homecoming score Marvellites desire? Giacchino isn’t only a swift and precise musician, he’s also more than willing to incorporate musical cues from other composers. Indeed, the first theme we hear is a take on the classic 60’s theme by Paul Francis Webster and Bob Harris over the opening credits and then straight into Alan Silvestri’s Avengers theme. As a composer, Giacchino enjoys the nods and the winks to prior themes and melodies and that continues with tips of the hat to Danny Elfman, Hans Zimmer and the late James Horner, composers who have all tackled Spider-Man scores this century.

Homecoming takes place a few months after the events of Civil War, where Peter Parker made a spectacular first appearance in the MCU as Spider-Man. Clearly, 15-year-old Pete thought that would lead to a career as a full-time Avenger, but Homecoming picks up 2 months later with Peter anxiously checking his mobile every few minutes, waiting for the call to adventure. Giacchino’s score parallels that with the opening two numbers ‘The World Is Changing’ and ‘Academic Decommitment’ which introduces his lighter, fresher main Spidey theme. Gone is the more adult foreboding of the previous 5 films – this Spider-Man isn’t a man, he’s a boy (and he will be for a good while yet) and the Sturm und Drang we know so well from Spidey’s past hasn’t happened to this iteration of Peter yet. Giacchino is more than up to the task of developing that over the coming years as Peter embeds himself further into the fabric of the MCU, but for now, the lightness of touch and jazzy float of the Homecoming score is more than enough to evoke the character at this point of his life.

In parts subdued and in other bold, brassy and bombastic in a way that many modern scores simply aren’t (specifically the Vultures theme), Homecoming is a lot of fun and very much feels like a marker for subsequent scores to build and develop. While last year’s Doctor Strange score was arguably the best MCU soundtrack yet, this is a lighter movie, and a breezier, less substantial soundtrack.

SPIDER-MAN HOMECOMING / COMPOSER: MICHAEL GIACCHINO / PUBLISHER: SONY CLASSICAL / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

DUNGEONS & DRAGONS PLAYER’S HANDBOOK: FIFTH EDITION

BOOK REVIEW: DUNGEONS & DRAGONS PLAYER’S HANDBOOK – FIFTH EDITION / DESIGNER: WIZARDS OF THE COAST / PUBLISHER: WIZARDS OF THE COAST / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

Any edition of Dungeons & Dragons relies on the quality of the Player’s Handbook to survive. Experienced gamers will tell you that it forms the core component of the game; after all, it is where the bulk of the rules can be found. A solid handbook can make all the difference between a stellar and a so-so edition of the game. The last universally applauded version was edition 3.5 and we’re rather happy to say that the Fifth Edition far outstrips that book in terms of content, usability and art.

It’s a hefty tome and is unashamedly intimidating with it. New players are firmly encouraged to pick up the excellent Starter Set instead; the manual is for those willing to delve deeper into the world of D&D. It’s also very pretty. Not only is it packed with inspiring art, it’s also clearly laid out and very easy to navigate. Frantic flipping of pages is part of the D&D experience but after a while it’s going to be pretty easy to know where all the rules you need from game to game are. It’s quite comprehensive, filled to the brim with ideas; enough to fuel a lifetime’s worth of gaming.

Rules-wise, the Fifth Edition has distilled decades of gameplay into one volume. Combat is slicker and easier, skills are more relevant. Character creation options cover many possible fantasy campaign types whilst mostly sticking to the old favourites. The new edition is also highly flexible, allowing for many types of story to be told.

Magic has always been a difficult thing to balance, and it was the bane of high-level third edition campaigns and a major element that led to the fourth edition being so reviled. The dedicated magic-using character classes are still the masters of their art, but characters from other classes can be built in such a way that they can also access ritual magic and the like. This makes magic a bit more common but also keeps the classic sword and sorcery feel of the game. The spell slot system is still present, but spells now scale; for example, the Bigby magic hand set now becomes more flexible the higher you go up in level. The same applies to the likes of healing spells. Magical items have also been revised; no longer can players rock up to their nearest mystical vendor and get their hands on all sorts of cool equipment; the days of the DM being miserly with the goods has returned and that should improve not only the game balance but encourage a better narrative.

The Fifth Edition is a lush and dense tome, finely balancing the complexity of D&D with the need to be accessible to everyone. It honours the versions of the past whilst at the same time being something new and fresh, and there is plenty of room for tinkering with the game mechanics. Over all, it is a bold contender to the current market leader and the edition most likely to become legendary.

MANIFEST Season 3, Episodes 1 – 3

By the end of season two of Manifest, the passengers of flight 828 – which returned five years after disappearing between Jamaica and New York – are no nearer to discovering what happened to them than at the beginning of the first episode, but they have had to endure the sinister attentions of the US government, attempt to decipher enigmatic visions they’ve dubbed “callings,” and encountered others who’ve seemingly returned from the dead to finish their business.

As season three begins, Ben and Vance are in Cuba to investigate an airplane tailfin fished out of the Caribbean which appears to belong to flight 828, which is strange because the plane landed intact in New York two years before. Meanwhile, Doctor Saanvi Bahl’s gambit to make the mysterious Major reveal what she knows about the passengers has resulted in the Major’s death, and there’s still no sign of the three escaped criminals who were determined to kill young Cal but ended up disappearing into the icy waters of a Catskills lake…

Yes, it’s complicated stuff, and you may need to check out seasons one and two on Netflix before attempting to unravel this particular Gordian Knot, but it’s a worthwhile endeavour if you’re a fan of Lost-style mystery boxes. With this season adding more theological puzzles to the mix – as well as an overuse of the word “lifeboat” – there may be a little testing of the patience, but overall the thirteen-episode run adds to the appeal of the show rather than wear it away.

It’s gutting, then, that NBC has wielded the cancellation axe, but with a rabid fanbase clamouring for more, there’s still hope the creators of Manifest might get to stick the landing after all.

Season 3 of MANIFEST is currently airing on Sky, with episodes available to stream via NowTV